


Save Me, San Francisco

by withdrawnred



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Inspired by a Movie, Language, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-31
Updated: 2012-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-04 12:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5333960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withdrawnred/pseuds/withdrawnred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Hermione has to find Malfoy and return him to his rightful place in Wiltshire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PART ONE

**Author's Note:**

> I was so excited to write this couple. Anastasia is one of my favourite Disney films, even though it’s not strictly speaking actually a Disney film. Or a fairy tale, for that matter. I love the story, the songs, the voice actors—everything. So when this came up as a pinch-hit, I jumped on it like Lavender on Ron. (I guess this is a sort of backwards thank-you to whoever had this couple and dropped.)
> 
> To my muse, thank you for the inspiration, but can we please go back to putting together one-shots when we pinch hit? 20,000 is a little excessive. Just sayin’.  
> To S and C, thank you for being such lovely alphas and cheerleaders with everything that I do. Your support and ego strokes are absolutely necessary to my existence.  
> To R, I cannot thank you enough—as I’m sure I’ve said countless times—for all the help you’ve given me over the past month with this fic. Your input, comments, and suggestions are probably responsible for this being finished at all.

“Remind me again why I let you run away to San Francisco?” Ginny Potter looks anything but pleased. Well, at least the parts of her that Hermione can see through the Floo do. Hermione is sitting in front of the fireplace in her hotel room.

“Look, you’re lucky I even found a room with a fireplace.” Hermione doesn’t know how many times she’s told her best friend that she hasn’t run away. “I told you, it’s just a job. Short-term. Plus, haven’t you always said I need to get out of London?”

Ginny scowls. “I didn’t expect there to be such extenuating circumstances, Hermione. I would have been ecstatic for you if you were taking a proper holiday and not working on Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy’s account. I can’t believe you’re actually working for them, of all people!”

Hermione takes a deep breath. “I know; it’s certainly not how I expected this year to pan out.” That’s the understatement of the year. When she was originally summoned to Malfoy Manor, she’d nearly had a heart attack. She hadn’t returned to that house since her first experience there, one she’d much rather forget and she isn’t afraid to admit that, but her curiosity had won out in the end. 

Her friend’s eyes widen. “I think it’s far more than that. You don’t have to do this, you know. Why do you care if that man never sees his son again?”

“I don’t.” She sniffs and turns her nose up. “It’s just a job. Nothing different to any other case I’ve taken on this year.”

Ginny’s smile is too knowing for Hermione’s tastes. “That’s a bald-faced lie, and you know it.” 

Hermione had been hoping they’d avoid this tangent. Ginny’s laugh makes her bristle, and she tries hard not to glare. 

“I know it,” Ginny continues. “Even Harry and Ron know it. You’re not fooling anyone. I haven’t seen you pour yourself into a case like this in years.”

Hermione sighs. “This one’s time-sensitive, Gi—”

“Oh, don’t give me that, Hermione. I know old man Malfoy is on his deathbed, or claims to be. Whatever. I don’t care. And neither should you.”

“That’s the thing with being a personal investigator. I’m paid to care about what my clients need from me and when. This one just so happens to be desperate for an answer as soon as humanly possible.”

“Is that how you rationalise doing this? You haven’t mentioned any of their names once, always referring to them as ‘the client’. What will you refer to him as?” Ginny’s smile transforms into something ugly and … just ugly. “The deliverable?” 

Hermione rolls her eyes. “Is he honestly why you think I’m here?”

“If the shoe fits…”

“What do I have to do to convince you it’s just a job, Ginny?” Hermione asks, pinching the bridge of nose. She’s tired of this argument. It’s one she’s had countless times with Ginny alone, not to mention every other being in her social circle that thinks her business is their own. 

“I think saying his name would be a start. I almost think you’re afraid to say it.”

“Whatever. I’m here, in San bloody Francisco, to escort Draco Malfoy to England, after which I will wash my hands of the entire Malfoy family. Are you happy? Did I say their names loudly enough for you?” When she looks up, determined to see this argument to its sorry end, she’s surprised to see a sad smile on Ginny’s face. She sighs again. “What is it?”

“I was hoping that I might have been able to convince you to drop the entire thing and come home.”

“Sorry to disappoint, but I’m here to stay.” Hermione glances at her watch. She’s got a half hour until the show starts, so to speak. Before she starts to implement her plan to somehow get Draco Malfoy back across the pond. 

“So, I’m curious. What do you get out of this?” 

“Just money. Perhaps a decent reference. At best, they’ll spread the word about my services and there will be purebloods galore lining up outside my door.” 

Ginny doesn’t so much as crack a smile at her joke. “Are you sure that’s all? Hermione, I know it’s been something like ten years, but … it changed you. I know you don’t like that it did, but that doesn’t change anything. I’m—bloody hell, Hermione, I’m worried about you.” 

Hermione meets her friend’s eyes again. “I know.” She sighs, a truth that she’s long since buried bubbling up and out of her throat. “I need the closure.”

Ginny’s lips thin, but she nods.

* * *

She pauses at the bar, taking a deep breath to steady her nerves and prepare herself. In mere seconds, the entire show will start and there’ll be no going back. Gripping her iced coffee tightly, slightly afraid that her sweaty palms will make it slip prematurely, she turns and slowly meanders through the small coffee shop. She sips from the cup, her mouth turning down at the temperature. Hermione’s always been the type to only drink cold drinks when it’s unbearably hot. But, as much as a small part of her would feel vindicated, she can’t justify dropping scalding coffee into anyone’s lap.

As distracted as she may seem to an outsider about god-knows-what—possibly including the beverage in her hand—she is anything but. Hermione honestly feels like one of those fighter planes from those ridiculous American war movies. She imagines herself acquiring her target, and then locking in on it, only to drop the missile perfectly and successfully accomplish the mission. Victory dance optional. 

And well, it’s almost the same. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches sight of that ever-recognisable towhead. _Target acquired_. 

Her legs seem to move with more purpose at that point, as she sees the perfect avenue of execution. _Target locked in_.

She pulls out her Muggle mobile; it has a lot of shiny features she’s barely had a chance to glance at, much less assimilate, before she arrived that morning. A few swipes of her thumb, and she is doing … something interesting, certainly. She almost forgets that she doesn’t care whether what she’s doing on the mobile is interesting or as boring as Ernie Macmillan’s first-date speech. Crashing into Draco Malfoy’s table with the full force of her purposeful walk and dropping her latte—in his lap, no less—soon fixes that. _Mission accomplished_.

“Shit!”

“Oh my god!” she exclaims as he jumps out of his chair and tries to wipe off some of the scalding coffee with the newspaper in his hand. She quickly grabs her mobile off the floor, having dropped it when she’d crashed into the table, and away from a growing puddle of coffee. “I am so sorry! Please, let me help.” 

When Hermione returns from the bar with a fistful of napkins, he’s still standing—silent and on the verge of fury, she can tell—looking down at himself with a look of sad acceptance. She approaches awkwardly, not sure whether she should physically help him or just hand him the napkins. He snatches them out of her hand and solves that mystery in one fell swoop. She stills when he finally looks at her. This is really the moment she’s been waiting for, or at least the first of many. His eyes pass over her face, and she doesn’t relax until she’s sure he hasn’t recognised her. He meets her eyes with a relatively dark glower, and she has to suppress a shudder. It’s been a long time since she’s seen that grey. She presses her lips tightly together, trying to will heart to return to a normal beat so that she can move on.

_Well, at least the Glamour is working._

“I feel so bad,” she says softly. He just raises his eyebrow, and she can feel the associated annoyance rise in the pit of her stomach. 

“It’s not a big deal.” His voice is husky, as if he hasn’t spoken for several hours. Not surprising, from the information she’s gathered about him in the short time since she was recruited. She’s almost certain she could recite every fact from the file they had given her, and that’s not counting her own investigating. 

He keeps to himself, goes back and forth from work to a select few local establishments, never really associating with anyone in particular. There’s this coffee shop in North Shore, a breakfast joint out by San Francisco State, and one of the more touristy piers near the Embarcadero, one of the main streets of the city. She thinks that Ghirardelli Square is probably a big hit for him, but that’s more due to his infamous sweet tooth than anything else. 

“No, don’t say that. Of course it is. I’m sure I ruined your trousers,” she whinges, placing her hand on her forehead for what she hopes isn’t too much of a dramatic effect. “Please, let me make it up to you. Can I buy you lunch, or maybe dinner?”

He looks at her blankly. “You want to pay for my dinner?” His up-intonation is so subtle, she almost misses that he had in fact asked a question. Another habit that seems to automatically annoy her. 

“Really, it’s the least I could do. Unless of course you’ve already got plans this evening.” She can see hints of the internal battle in his face, and she almost thinks he’ll say no. It would be just typical for him to do that, wouldn’t it? 

“Fine, yeah.”

Hermione blinks in surprise. “Oh! Great!” 

He looks wary. Distrustful. In other words, normal. “What’s your name?”

The abrupt question shocks her, and she stumbles over her thoughts. “Jeannie. Or, erm … Jean. Or J. Whatever, really whatever.” She wants to stab herself with a pointy object for getting so flustered. It’s embarrassing.

“Really, whatever? So that means you answer to ‘bull in a china shop’ as well?”

Her eyes snap up to his in shock, and she’s even more surprised to see mirth hiding in that grey abyss. “Yeah, I suppose I deserve that.”

* * *

Hermione takes a deep breath as she enters the ladies’ room at the restaurant Draco had chosen. It’s certainly nicer than she’d expected, but on second thought, she can’t see why she didn’t expect Draco Malfoy to pick a fancy restaurant. Although, picking a Michelin-starred restaurant is another story entirely. Thankfully, this one only has one star, so she doesn’t feel like a complete cad. She just has to keep reminding herself that this meal is one of many expenses for which she’ll be charging her client.

With some trepidation, she approaches the mirror. Her hands go to her head almost automatically. Usually, she has a full head of hair, something that has long been a symbol of who she was. Bushy brown hair, that must be Hermione Granger. Uncontrollable, much like she’s always aimed to be. Not necessarily to the point of being a menace to society, but such that society couldn’t use her as a puppet. Merlin knows they’d tried on multiple accounts. To prepare for this job, though, she’d done the unthinkable and cast a Glamour charm, something she’s not at all fond of. Something about these charms has always rubbed her the wrong way. They just make her feel _wrong_ somehow. So now she barely recognises herself when she looks in the mirror. Short, short hair. She’d heard someone refer to it as a “pixie cut,” like it was something adorable and cute. (The woman obviously had no experience with pixies.) Her hair’s still rather similar in colour to her own, but that’s where the majority of the similarities end. Her eyes are now blue, her face more angular and thin, and her skin quite pale. Luckily, her body had retained much of its shape, so she doesn’t have to worry about fitting her clothes to a different height or width. But she still feels like an absolute stranger in her own skin. 

With a final swipe of her hand to smooth the non-existent wrinkles from her skirt, she walks back towards the table. The second she’d walked into the restaurant ten minutes prior, she could feel a difference in the very atmosphere to anything else she’s ever experienced. Even the air feels elegant, and she’s almost surprised they’re not charging her for their more pristine oxygen. 

“Nice of you to finally join me,” Draco greets her, his gaze wary.

She doesn’t even try to hold back the blush. It seems to ingratiate her to him a little, so perhaps that’s a good thing. “This is a beautiful restaurant. I’ve never been to one with Michelin stars before.”

“Then why’d you agree to come here?” he asks. She can sense the unbidden question: can you afford this?

“I’ve always been curious about what the other side is like,” she answers with a small smile, unsure how exactly to say _I have a very rich benefactor who’ll more than cover this meal for us, so don’t worry about it._

He looks unconvinced but shrugs it off, instead pulling out the menu. “Wine?”

She nods. “Do they pair the wines with the meals?”

“Probably.”

With that, they each glance down at the menu, and Hermione tries to ease the tension between her shoulders. So much of her so-called mission depends on this dinner; she needs to be as charming and sweet as possible for this blasted thing to go off without a hitch. 

“See anything you like?” she asks, legitimately curious. It seems he’d know better than she what’s good to order here. Although, every bloody item on that menu is probably more delicious than everything she’s eaten in her thirty years combined. 

“I always get a bit distracted by the pudding menu.” That makes her crack an involuntary smile. Always the chocolate with him. 

Eventually, they each wade through the sparse menu choices and order their food, some of it quite mysterious to Hermione. She sees a silver lining in the fact that it is a four-course meal. She has that much more time to charm this man. 

“So, I didn’t get your name earlier,” she says pointedly. She’s mentally kicking herself and hoping she hasn’t slipped and called him by his name before this moment.

He smirks. “You didn’t ask.”

“Well, I am now,” she teases. It’s a relief to see that he’s already flirting. The more at ease he is, the better.

“It’s Draco.” He glares almost immediately after he says it. 

She raises her eyebrow. “And why are you glaring, exactly?”

“Almost everyone laughs when they first hear it.”

“Oh.” Hermione nods slowly, searching for the right words. It’s difficult with him looking at her like that. “I mean, it’s certainly unique, but it’s not the worst I’ve heard.” Draco simply raises his eyebrow, unimpressed. She straightens in her chair, pulling her posture as upright as she can. “Do you know why they chose it?”

“Hmm?” 

“Your parents, why did they name you Draco?”

“You mean as opposed to something mundane like Jean?”

She can’t help but roll her eyes. “Yes, God forbid you have a boring name like mine.” Hermione pinches her thigh in an effort to curb her tongue. She’d promised them she’d be as civil as possible to him, but she just can’t help it sometimes. It’s like her mouth has a natural reaction to him. Word vomit, she’ll claim. She can’t control her gut reactions to this man, which was more often than not in the form of snide comments, any more than she can control her most primal urges. 

“I don’t really know. Probably something to do with the constellation.”

She nods, her head almost automatically turning to the window next to them to look at the night sky. Or rather, what part of it hadn’t yet been blocked out by the San Francisco skyline. That’s the problem she’s always had with big cities. At her parents’ home in Surrey, she’d taken the sky for granted. But there isn’t a place in London where she can climb out on the roof to see the stars. The lights had polluted the sky and continued to obscure the stars, no matter the time of night or year. Also, she’s always been a bit skittish of city roofs, because she’s never been sure whether or not it’s actually legal. And then there’s that whole thing with falling.

“And yours?” Hermione turns her head back to Draco in confusion. He chuckles at what she can only assume is the look on her face. “Any particular reason behind your name?”

“Family tradition. There’ve always been Jeans in my family, and I’m the only child, so I guess there wasn’t really a choice.”

“Do you like it?”

She frowns momentarily. “It’s just a name. I don’t put much stock in them. Some people think your name affects the person you are, but I don’t think I’d be any different had my parents named me Penelope or Claire.”

“So you don’t like it.” 

Hermione meets his eyes. And there he goes, putting words in her mouth. “I’m ambivalent about it. Do you like yours?”

“I do.”

“Then why were you so defensive about it?”

“It annoys me when people laugh at my name.”

“Well, a lot of things annoy me, I have to say, but I don’t find it necessary to make it known every time.”

His head tilts ever so slightly. “What annoys you?”

_You_ , she wants to say. Instead, she says with a grin, “Washing dishes.”

Draco smirks. “Is that all? And here I thought you were going to air a string of annoyances a mile long.”

“I could, but I didn’t want to bore you with more of my mundane life.”

When she looks up this time, his smile is one borne more out of contentment, fleeting though it may be, than wry amusement as it has been most of the night. Hermione mentally gives herself one point. She’ll get through to him if it’s the last thing she does.

* * *

She is so happy she wore a dress. It means she has avoided the embarrassment of having to unbutton her trousers after dinner to make room for her protruding belly. Instead she can walk around with no such qualms. Her wardrobe problem comes in the form of heels. And walking. It’s a magical feat, especially for walking disasters like her.

“So, what are you doing in San Francisco?” Draco asks. They’re walking towards the Bay Bridge, a pretty sight if you like seeing city lights in the dark, he’d said. 

“How do you know I’m not from here?” she teases. 

“First, your accent doesn’t exactly say, ‘I’m from the Bay!’” 

“I wouldn’t say your accent is so different to mine, good sir.”

He laughs. “Touché.” She blames the wine for the small pleasure she gets from that sound. “Second, when I mentioned going towards Bay Bridge, you started walking west.” 

She blushes. “I did say I’ve never been here before. You were forewarned.” 

“Not going to answer my question, then?”

She blinks up at him in confusion before she remembers the question. “Oh! Right, sorry.” She can almost feel him smile at the recurrent apology. It’s always been like she vomits apologies; they just come, unbidden sometimes. Like it’s her default for everything. “I’m on holiday, actually.”

“Nothing in particular brought you here?”

“Just wanted to escape London for a bit. Get some of that sunshine I keep hearing about.” 

“And you came alone?” 

She nods with a quick shrug. 

“That’s pretty impressive, I must say. Most wo— _people_ aren’t brave enough to travel without companions.”

Hermione raises her eyebrows, in lieu of the ability to lift just one. It takes almost all of her self-control not to call him out on what he’d almost said just then. “Brave?” She sees him shrug, noncommittal. All she can think is how much different his idea of bravery was ten years and another life ago. “I don’t know that I’d call it brave. I hopped on a plane and secured a hotel room. And then proceeded to spill my latte on a hapless stranger,” she finishes with a small smile. 

Draco chuckles, and that pit in her stomach reappears at the sound. She pinches herself, trying to move past it. 

“What do you do when you’re not on holiday?” he asks. 

“I’m a headhunter for a firm in London.”

“Are you any good?” he asks with a smirk, which she can’t help but return.

“Only the best.” She grins. “I’ve always had a penchant for research, but it’s nice to be able to channel that into something that will actually pay my bills. Being able to make my own hours is a perk, though.” 

“I can only imagine.”

“So what’s your story? What do you do here?”

“I’m a designer for a firm in the Financial District.” He points over his shoulder in the general direction of the neighbourhood. “Marketing, brand identity, interface design, that sort of thing.”

She smiles, although she sadly has no idea what interface design is. The topic has been mentally filed away as a future research topic. “Do you love it?”

“What?” His head snaps to her, the surprise evident on his face.

“Is it really such a strange question? Do you enjoy what you do?” 

“No,” he hesitates, “I suppose it isn’t. Just not something you expect to hear every day.” He pauses again, licking his lips, and she tries not to get distracted by the familiarity of his habits. 

She joins him when he sits on a bench facing the water and the Bay Bridge, one of the main streets at their backs, running along all the piers. She feels surrounded by the essence of San Francisco. The sight of the city’s lights reflecting off the water is breath-taking. It may be next to impossible to see any part of the night sky within this city’s limits, but Hermione has always thought that cities are at their most beautiful at night, when the full force of the people within them shines in the lights. Perhaps it’s fair, trading one sky of lights for a skyline of them. Both make her appreciate the insignificance of her problems.

“No, I wouldn’t say I love it.” Draco’s voice sounds, and Hermione would be lying if she claimed she hadn’t jumped. “But something’s got to pay the bills, right?”

He almost sounds defeated, and if she’s really honest with herself, it digs deep. “I guess it depends on whether you need to love your job. Unless it’s a means to a job that does make you happy.”

He shrugs. “With this economy, I’m just glad I have a means to pay my bills at all. I’ve always just figured happiness will follow eventually.”

She nods. The economy really is horrendous and has been for a while, so far as she can tell. “Must be thankful you’re not flipping burgers.”

“Too right.”

Hermione sits further back against the bench. She’s still rather amazed that he’d managed to secure a job as a designer at all. Through the war, everyone had had their therapy. For some it’d been sex, for others cooking, for her reading. Draco’s therapy had been a pen and a locked door. 

“Why do you keep doing that?” 

“What?” she asks, puzzled. As far as she can tell, she hasn’t done anything besides talk to him and maybe stare at the sky for the past ten minutes. 

“You keep reaching towards your neck and … grabbing air.” He looks almost concerned for his safety. And well, that is unfortunately an expression she’s familiar with.

She blushes, still cursing how easily she does that after all these years. “I keep forgetting I don’t have long hair anymore. It’s habit,” she apologises. 

He nods slowly. “How long ago did you cut your hair?”

She hesitates, but then offers, “A day or two.” She’d always been told—and by him, no less—that the best lies are always closest to the truth. It’s something she lives by when she has to use a cover like this.

He tilts his head slightly, as if sizing her up. Perhaps he’s trying to imagine her with longer hair. “It looks nice.” 

She looks down at her lap as she feels the blush continue to creep into her cheeks. “Thank you. I’m still getting used to it.”

“Does your head feel lighter?” Her head snaps up, her expression incredulous, and he continues quickly, “I couldn’t tell you how many girls I’ve seen around that go on about how much lighter they feel after a massive hair cut. I always thought they were absolute loons.”

“Oh!” Hermione tries and fails to suppress her giggles. “I hadn’t really thought about it, but yeah, I suppose it does.” 

Draco smirks. It looks like he still enjoys being proven right, she thinks. “So, how long are you in town, Jean?”

It takes her a second to realize that he’s speaking to her. “Oh, about a week. I’ve got to be back after the weekend.”

“Would you like a bit of a tour of the city sometime?” He seems to hesitate, as if he’s chewing over his words. “I figure I owe you something at least, after letting you pay for that dinner,” he says with a small smile. Almost bashful. It looks unnatural. 

Hermione grins widely. “I’d love that.” She loves when things go according to plan.

* * *

They begin with brunch at a delicious little breakfast place on the west side of the city called Squat and Gobble, where the conversation is a little stilted and awkward until she challenges him to a game of people-watching. He seems to enjoy the creative, and sometimes cruel, nature of the game. The boy—man, she has to keep reminding herself—relaxes then, and Hermione feels her own posture slacken just a little in response. It’s still jarring, looking into that face after all these years. Age and the States have been good to him, she thinks wryly. A small part of her wishes it hadn’t. But then, she’s never really understood how men seem to grow more attractive with age.

As he regales her with the stories behind each of that skinny blonde’s tattoos, she tries to smile in all the right places. He mentions lovers and beloved movies, but the girl’s favourite is the first, arguably the ugliest, which he claims was for her first love. Hermione wonders how he justifies his own tattoo, not to mention the scars that line his body with no war in his memory. 

Narcissa had deigned to give her some information last night that the blonde had felt was superfluous; they had great reason to believe, apparently, that Draco had no memory of his magical life. When pressed, Mrs Malfoy had given nothing else, stubbornly insisting that their reasons for believing it shouldn’t matter to her. 

_Just like how you hadn’t thought this little fact was important to me?_ Hermione had wanted to ask. 

She asks him, “Do you have any tattoos?” It’s partially because she’s still so angry with his mother, but the other side of it is that she’s curious to know his explanation. 

He stills, but eventually nods. “Just something from when I was a kid.”

“You don’t like it anymore?” she pushes. “What is it?”

“Some combination of a skull and a snake. Luckily it’s on my forearm, so it hasn’t been a problem at work or anything, but I’m not crazy about it. To be honest, I don’t even know why I got it.”

She offers a small smile. “Has it been that long?”

“No.” He frowns. “Well, maybe. It’s rather faded, so I imagine I got it a long time ago. To be honest, I don’t remember much before a decade or so ago.”

Hermione’s eyes widen and her jaw drops a little. She honestly never expected him to admit to such a thing—the vulnerability of it all. “Oh,” she pauses, chewing the inside of her lip. “I can’t even imagine…”

Draco purses his lips, obviously uncomfortable. Luckily for her, the waitress appears shortly after, carrying their meals. Hermione smiles up at her, possibly more grateful to her than anyone in her recent memory, before digging in to her crepe. She has to stop herself from staring longingly at Draco’s, which is stuffed with Nutella and various other things. 

After brunch, Hermione and Draco work their way through many of the typical tourist traps, most of which she is only vaguely interested in. At Haight and Ashbury, Draco explains what little he knows of the political background to the streets, and he looks surprised each time she passes a storefront without batting an eyelash, but she’s never been a big fan of shopping. Especially when her nerves are this frayed. Retail therapy isn’t her fix of choice, and never has been.

However, on their walk from Chinatown—where they’d grabbed take-out for a late lunch—towards the piers, she stops dead in her tracks at the sight of City Lights bookstore. Her eyes widen and she’d be damned if her jaw didn’t completely slacken. It takes almost too much of her self-control to shut her eyes to the storefront and turn back towards the piers again. 

Draco is looking at her with a strange expression on his face. Perhaps it’s concern that looks so strange on him. He must think her absolutely mad, but at least she hadn’t drooled, she thinks. 

“Sorry,” she mumbles. “I just really like bookshops.”

He doesn’t look convinced. “We could go in, you know.”

Immediately, Hermione shakes her head, perhaps more violently than is considered normal. “No, no, it’s fine. I’ll just go in sometime this week.”

“Really, if you want to, you should go in there and have a look.”

“No, you don’t understand. If I go in there, I probably won’t leave until they force me out at closing time.” She chuckles when he just raises an eyebrow. “There’s no reason to waste your time when I can just come back and spend all day there tomorrow.” 

“I see.” 

Well, at least he looks amused now, not concerned. The lesser of two evils, she supposes.

* * *

Hermione smiles as a small group of teenagers bolts past them. Her eyes immediately take in how carefree they seem with the California sun beating on their backs. The sight is rather bittersweet for her, as it’s a reminder of everything their youth should have been and wasn’t. From what she can guess, the biggest issue in those kids’ lives is figuring out what they’ll have for dinner this evening. What she would give to have had such trifling problems at seventeen.

The man standing next to her is reminder enough of the things she and her friends and classmates suffered. Not just once, but twice, it seems he’s been forced to give up the joys and security of being a young man. You’re forced to grow up a whole hell of a lot faster when your mistakes don’t cost your parents trivial bits of money but rather their very lives. That had certainly been a point of commonality between the two of them.

But that was years ago. 

Hermione shakes those incredibly unwelcome thoughts from her head as they continue towards the more touristy piers. It’s been a long day of walking around the city, sometimes aided by one of its several public transportation systems, and the sight of the San Francisco Bay is spectacular. They are now walking down the Embarcadero, the road that each of the city’s piers calls home. There are at least forty of them, if the numbering of the piers means anything. The sidewalks are lined with street vendors selling everything from on-the-spot caricatures to miniatures of Alcatraz, the infamous prison on an island in the Bay. She tries not to let the sight of the old prison (now museum)—or the various knick-knacks based on it—make her think of the wizarding equivalent. 

As they walk down one of the piers—Draco had mentioned something about sea lions and of course she’d insisted on seeing them—they walk in silence, each mostly concentrated on finishing off the melting ice cream cones in their hands. While Hermione had insisted on seeing the sea lions, Draco had insisted on a requisite visit to Ghirardelli’s for some ice cream. She wasn’t surprised, but neither was she particularly reticent. Merlin knows she’s always been a fan of ice cream, and one doesn’t just pass up the opportunity to get sweets from Ghirardelli Square. Besides, she’s glad for an excuse not to talk constantly to Draco, and she’s almost sure he feels the same way. Part of it is that it’s a comfortable silence. 

The silence also gives her a chance to really take in her surroundings; so far on this trip, she hasn’t had much time to do so outside of planning every word that escapes her mouth. As she continues nibbling on the cone, Hermione leans on the side railing of the pier, her eyes locked on the water. The promised sea lions look magnificent. Several are napping on rafts placed randomly near each pier and some are taking their time swimming about the channel between the piers. The most entertaining bit, though, is when a pair fight over a nap spot on a raft.

She feels so at ease, so much more than she has in years, with the wind just barely tangling through her curls and the sun kissing her bare shoulders. She’s always been so concerned with working herself to the bone that she rarely notices things happening in the physical world around her. It only makes this experience sweeter. 

Having finished her own cone, she finally turns to face her companion. He’s standing next to her, elbows propped on the railing much like hers. She’s momentarily distracted as she watches him methodically suck on each of his fingers, presumably to clean the sticky ice cream off of them. Hermione immediately closes her eyes, then moves her head to reopen them to the water and the sea lions. Funny how they don’t seem half as enchanting now as they had mere seconds before. 

“Penny for your thoughts?” 

Hermione swallows, hopefully inaudibly, at the sudden sound of his baritone. She offers a quick smile and turns her gaze towards him finally. A small smirk is on his face, but she’s long since wondered if it had become permanent over the years. “I was just thinking how I need to do this more often.”

“This?”

She gestures towards the water. “I don’t know—enjoying life, I guess. I don’t usually take vacations or stop to see what’s going on around me, to be honest.”

“Haven’t you heard that idiom? All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl.”

“I’ve never been much good at balancing a social life with everything else. The only thing my friends complain more about than that I never make time for them is that I never take a holiday.” 

“And no boyfriend, then?”

“Not at the moment, no,” she says softly, very much thrown off by this tangent. “I’ve been focussing more on my job lately than my love life.” 

“From the sounds of it, there’s never been a time that you haven’t.”

Hermione smirks through the annoyance that rises from the pit of her stomach. “I’d much rather be career-driven than driven by that.” 

She gestures her head towards a couple several metres from where she and Draco are standing. The man is caging his girlfriend—or at least, Hermione hopes she’s his girlfriend—into the railing. She’s giggling up a storm, and Hermione can hear every personal rule she has against public displays of affection being shattered. She’s more than a little pleased when Draco’s mouth turns down in obvious distaste.

“Not a huge fan of public affection either, are you?” she asks.

He chuckles, almost sardonically. “No, can’t say that I am.”

Hermione sneaks another look at the couple in question. “I’ve never much understood why people in love can’t just reel it in whilst in public. Honestly, it isn’t like the love is going to disappear if you don’t constantly prove it to the world.”

“I don’t really believe in it at all, to be honest.” 

“Believe in what?”

“Love. I can’t say that I’ve ever really been in love with anyone—that I can remember.” 

Hermione’s eyes close almost immediately in reaction, and it pains her more than she’d ever admit that he doesn’t—can’t—recognise the effect of his words. “I’m sure there’s a girl out there somewhere who might be surprised to hear you say that.”

He shrugs. “What about you?” 

“Almost, once,” she claims. “But it ended weirdly and never went anywhere.” 

“Weirdly?” 

“He basically took off one day, left a note, the end.” 

“What a dick.” 

Hermione blinks; she keeps forgetting he’s spent so long in the States—it’s enough to make anyone pick up Americanisms like that.

“Mmm,” she hums. “But that was a long time ago. Ten years, almost, I think.” 

“You seem like the type of girl who’d have picked a huge fight over that.” 

She laughs. “Maybe.” 

“And you haven’t fallen in love since?” 

She shrugs. “Something’s always been off, I guess.”

He nods, like he understands. “Something always is, isn’t it? It never seems worth it anyway.”

Her brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

Draco looks down at the railing, his long fingers following the old grooves in the dark wood. “You put all that work into a relationship and more often than not, you’ll start off with something like that,” he cocks his head quickly towards the couple in question, “but then something’s not right with one or the other and somebody always ends up on the shitty end of things. Why even bother, honestly? Seems like an utter waste of time and energy.”

Hermione watches him with wide eyes as he continues to massage the panel beneath his fingers. It’s almost distracting, how reverently he’s worshipping the wood that’s holding them safe and dry. But even that isn’t enough to activate the filter that usually censors her thoughts. 

“What are you scared of? Nobody’s ever died of a broken heart.” It sounds more bitter than she wanted it to—which was not at all. 

“That you know of,” he quips, but his smile is still a bit too sad.


	2. PART TWO

Hermione sighs as she walks in the door to her flat. A quick glance at her watch—still set to San Francisco time—tells her that she only has a couple hours until her Portkey back to California leaves. Placing her bag on the dining table, her eyes scan the flat. It feels like it’s been ages since she’s been home. These past five days could have been a year, as drained as she is. She’ll definitely need a real holiday after this job. 

At the feel of something against her ankles, she looks down to see her Dorian. Hermione quickly picks the grey cat up and holds him against her collarbone. Dorian curls further into her and almost immediately begins purring, and she’s glad that her absence hasn’t completely robbed her companion of his affections. Cats could be so finicky—if she ever left Crookshanks for more than two days, he’d have snubbed her for twice as long. 

With a quick scratch of his head, she sets Dorian onto one of the arms on her couch. He makes a show of protesting with a loud meow, but just as quickly settles down into the cushion for a nap. “Oh, I have missed you,” Hermione mumbles at the cat with a chuckle before turning to the mantle above her fireplace. She quickly studies each of the pictures and pulls out her wand, casting a spell to hold each of the magical photographs still. She tucks a couple under her arm to be put away, one a picture of Draco himself and the other of a triumphant Neville leaning over a cauldron containing his first successfully brewed potion. Neither of those are photographs she could explain to a memory-addled Draco. 

She glances around the perimeter of the living room and grabs everything that may be too strange to be considered Muggle—the Sneakoscope and Extendable Ears from her bookcase, as well as the box of Floo powder from the mantle. Arms full, she pads back into her bedroom and gingerly places the items next to her old trunk. Hermione yanks the trunk open and blows the thin layer of dust away from the top contents. She honestly can’t remember the last time she’d opened it. She lays the Sneakoscope, now stuffed into a sock, into one of the few open spaces in the trunk. And just as she’s about to lay down the frames, she notices a folded piece of parchment tucked into the side of the trunk, between the fabric panel and her oldest copy of _Hogwarts: A History_. Her hand freezes, hovering over the trunk, and she can feel her heart hammering as she swallows. 

Hermione exhales heavily and gingerly takes the parchment out of the trunk. She’d almost forgotten about this. She unfolds it in her lap, gently pushing Dorian away from the paper. Immediately, she recognizes the sharp strokes. Even now, she doesn’t need to see the two small initials in the corner to know the artist: DM. 

Staring back at her is a scene that even now makes her smile. It shows the kitchen at Grimmauld Place, back when it was still the headquarters for the Order. Somehow, he’d managed to capture the essence of every person in the room. Seamus is grinning unabashedly at Ron, whose blush shows through even without colour. Harry and Ginny are gripping each other’s hand, and it seems like they barely even notice the other people surrounding them. Hermione herself is there, too, staring off—Merlin knows where. 

This drawing had helped her through many sleepless nights after the war. She’d often found it hard to focus on the good after so much loss in such a short amount of time. 

The sound of three sharp knocks on her door startles Hermione—who in Merlin’s name could that be? She hadn’t told a soul that she was back in England, mostly because it was for mere hours. She walks slowly into the living area of her flat, near the door. 

Then, three more knocks—more insistent this time—and Ginny’s voice. “I know you’re in there, Hermione. Open up!”

Hermione’s eyes widen in shock, but she quickly opens the door. “What are you doing here?” she blurts. 

Ginny just smirks. “There may or may not have been a charm to tell me when you’ve returned.”

She tries not to smile at her friends’ resourcefulness. “Glad to see you’re taking advantage of Harry’s position.”

The redhead grins widely. “It has its uses.”

“Well, since you’re here, the least you can do is make tea,” Hermione says with a playful grin. In all seriousness though, Ginny’s makes a damn good cuppa. Of all the things she’s inherited from Molly, that’s the best—at least in Hermione’s opinion. 

Ginny just smiles and turns towards the kitchen. It’s almost unnerving how easily she navigates through Hermione’s kitchen. Soon enough, she’s put tea in a pot and the kettle on the stove. 

“So, is it done, then?”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet? What does that mean?”

“I’m just tidying up the flat. I’ve got a Portkey back to San Francisco in a couple hours.”

“Wait… You plan on bringing him here? To your flat?” Ginny asks, eyebrow raised high. 

Hermione rolls her eyes. “Not necessarily, but I figured just in case.” When Ginny moves her hands to her hips, she continues, “Fine, _Molly_. Do you think he’d expect me to drag my bags around with everywhere whilst he’s in London? Or maybe I’d just leave my things at his hotel room.”

“All right,” Ginny says, her hands up in mock surrender. “Down, girl. So you got him to come back?”

Hermione shrugs. “He mentioned that he’s unhappy in San Francisco, so I told him my employer has a position for a new art director that he might be interested in.” 

Ginny frowns. “Since when has Draco Malfoy been interested in art?”

Hermione sighs, her mind going to the parchment on her bedroom floor. “A while, actually.”

Ginny nods slowly, “Colour me surprised. So he accepted?”

“Yeah. A couple days later, he called to say he’d be willing to interview for the position. So he’s taking a short holiday for a long weekend here.” Hermione smiles gratefully when Ginny places a cup of perfect tea in front of her. She takes a long sip and hums in pleasure. “Thanks for making this. I wish I could make it like you do, honestly.”

Ginny smiles back at her. “Anytime, love. Don’t get me wrong, Hermione, but you don’t exactly seem pleased about this whole thing.”

“I’m just tired.”

“I can only imagine,” Ginny says slowly. “So when you said ‘tidying up’, you meant…”

“Making it Muggle-friendly,” Hermione says with a chuckle. She’d never thought she’d have to do something like this, especially for one of the pureblood elite. “I’m almost done, though.”

With that, Ginny follows her back to the bedroom, where she quickly folds up the parchment and finishes placing the photographs into the trunk. 

“What’s that?” Ginny asks, gesturing towards the unfolded parchment in Hermione’s hand.

“Just a drawing.” Hermione hopes Ginny interprets her answer as flippant and that she thinks it’s unimportant. 

“Right.”

Hermione can tell she’s unconvinced, but at least she drops the topic.

* * *

It’s been less than a week since she first landed in San Francisco—maybe three days since she “bumped” into Draco at that café and less than one since she and Ginny sat in her now Muggle-friendly flat. Ultimately, she’s very happy that she went back to England, even if for such a short while. She’d agonised over the short twenty-four hours between when she’d returned from England and when she had to meet Draco en route to the airport.

Her anxiety soars from that moment and shows no sign of ever waning, but she’s secretly gleeful at his obvious nerves, enough that she forgets about her own. If only momentarily, it’s still a relief. 

She ribs him about his fear of flying—“How do you think you got here if not by plane? People don’t travel the Atlantic by ship like they used to, you know.”—for which she gets the expected glare and a short rant—something about how he’s not overtly fond of flying and, moreover, planes aren’t to be trusted. She does a double take when he says he doesn’t like to fly, because it’s something she so naturally associates with him. Hermione never thought in a million years that she’d hear those words escape Draco Malfoy’s lips. But at the same time, a large part of her agrees with him. After so many years of travelling via Floo or Portkey or Apparition, spending hours upon hours on a hunk of metal, and trusting that it’ll remain in the air and not drop straight to the core of the earth, is disconcerting at best. At worst, it’s frightening, but she tries not to even allow her nerves to think about venturing in that direction. 

Several hours later, when a shock of turbulence rocks the plane, Hermione grips the armrest of her seat like her life depends on it. Almost immediately she snaps her head towards Draco. But it seems those sleeping pills had really done the trick; the man was out cold, even snoring softly. 

She’s amazed that she’s even got this far, to be quite honest. Ginny had been right from the start—this entire thing has been crazy, insane, unthinkable. That confidence she’d claimed in her ability to complete this job? Hermione doubted she’d fooled Ginny for a second. She’s long since accepted that she’s more or less transparent, especially regarding … certain people, and Ginny is better at reading people than most. 

Once the plane finally steadies—at this rate, she’s starting to wish they were flying by broom—she releases the death grip and pries her fingers from the armrests. Draco is still deep asleep, ever the heavy sleeper. Hermione’s always envied that of anyone who can sleep through anything since she seems to wake up at the smallest sound or strange feeling. As she glances at Draco, she realises that this is the first time since their meeting at that café that she’s truly had a chance to look at him—really _look_. It’s kind of annoying that he hasn’t changed much. So many years have passed, and yet she swears he looks like barely half that time has passed. His hairline is receding slightly, and there are a few light scars here and there from their childhood and the war, but other than that and his Muggle attire, one would think it was 1998. 

He looks peaceful, and Hermione is struck by a sense of déjà vu. It had always amazed her how different he seemed when asleep, especially compared to his usual snarky, snide self, like being asleep was enough to smooth away all of his stress and preoccupations. When he’s asleep, Draco Malfoy looks calm—as if his life had taken a completely different turn years ago. If only the peace would last. She honestly doesn’t know what his parents plan on doing with him once she returns him. Perhaps they’ve figured out a way to return his memories; perhaps they haven’t. She resolves to alert Harry—as if Ginny hasn’t already—and make sure he has his Aurors keep an eye out for anything … ulterior. She wouldn’t trust the elder Malfoys with a Sickle, to be frank.

It’s only then that it occurs to her. 

She still cares. And too much. 

Hermione lays her head back against the seat and closes her eyes, willing sleep to claim her. Anything to make this flight go faster—to get this bloody thing over with already.

* * *

“So, this is home,” Hermione says as she pushes the door to her flat open, her voice relaxed but her eyes roving the room for anything she may have missed in her sweep the other day. Satisfied that the flat is as “safe” as can be, she pushes forward. “Go on and make yourself at home. I just need to put these bags in my room.”

When she returns, seconds later, he’s just where she had expected him to be: hands stuffed in his trouser pockets, eyes glancing over the pictures and knick-knacks decorating her mantle. He looks up then, expectant and kind of awkward. This is certainly the first time the two of them have been in a flat together, with the marked exception of the two seconds it had taken him to throw his things in his hotel room. If the reason for his awkwardness, slight as it is, is that he’s unsure what is and isn’t appropriate between them, she can sympathise. So she throws him a bone. 

“Would you like some tea?”

He visibly relaxes. “Please. Can I help?”

She waves him off. “No, no. I’ll just be a moment.” Hermione pads over to her kitchen, and she stops short when her hand instinctively goes to her pocket, where she usually keeps her wand. She glances over at her bag, where it’s been stored of late, and sighs. She’d never really thought about how much she relies on her magic to do even the most mundane things—like preparing tea. So, wandless, she carries on, boiling the water and setting up the tea service the same way her mother always does. Although it’s certainly more time-consuming, she’s grateful for that. It allows her to gather her thoughts and go back over her plan. She has a tentative back-up just in case the whole thing backfires, but she’s praying to whatever higher power exists that Plan A will go through. Plan B is much less foolproof, and she thinks it just begs to fail. 

Laying the tea egg, full of Earl Gray—she’d thought of putting in his favourite, but figured that would make him more suspicious than she would like—into one of her grandmother’s old teapots, Hermione then pours boiled water in and latches the top. After a quick exhale and count to three, she lifts the tray and returned to the living room. 

“I see you’ve found Dorian,” she says with a chuckle as she lays the tray onto her coffee table. Draco is sitting in one corner of her couch, a book in one hand and her cat occupying the other. “Careful. He may never let you stop petting him,” she adds with a cheeky grin. “How do you take your tea?”

“Milk, please, and two sugars,” he requests. “You know, I’m not sure I’ll ever recover my left hand at this rate.”

Dorian looks like he’s on Cloud Nine at this point, his purring indicating just how happy he is. “He doesn’t get many visitors these days, so I would be surprised if he ever lets you leave.” She smiles and hands him a fresh cuppa.

“Ah, well. It’s the least useful of my two hands anyway.”

Hermione’s cheeks redden. Well, maybe he meant it as an over-arching _I’m right-handed and so obviously my right hand is more useful than my left!_ sort of thing. But he looks far too mischievous for that to be true, she thinks when she finally locks eyes with him. Hermione allows him a small smile but shakes her head. _Men…_

“I am glad you’re not allergic. I always forget to ask people if they are before inviting them in.”

“Have a lot of people come round, do you?”

Her mouth falls ajar at the innuendo. “ _Friends_ ,” she emphasises. “I have a lot of friends come round.” Cheeky bastard. It seems that losing his memory hadn’t robbed him of his snarkiness. It may have taken a while for him to get out of his shell, so to speak, but apparently they’d gotten past that point. 

“So,” he says between sips, “tell me about this company you’ve hooked me up with.”

“What, you mean you didn’t research them whilst you were deciding?” Hermione teases with a raised eyebrow.

“Of course I did. I don’t know how responsible that’d make me if I just jumped onto a trans-Atlantic flight without even looking into the firm I’m supposedly interviewing with.” He settles back into the couch, Dorian settling himself into the man’s lap. “I know what they say about themselves, and what the media says about them. But not the employee’s perspective. Or the outsider.”

She nods. That is a valid point, and not one she’d expected. “That’s fair. And I hate to disappoint, but I don’t have much of an insider’s perspective. I’m technically a contractor—I help many companies find the applicants they’re looking for, not just one.” 

Hermione pauses, taking a long sip of tea in order to better postulate her answer. “However, no applicant I’ve sent to them has ever failed the probationary period, which is when my contact with them ends. As far as I know, their employees are happy with the company and with the work they do.

“I mean, what do you want from your next employer? From what I could tell you had two standards. One, getting out of San Francisco. And two, not being treated like chattel.” He’d gone on for what seemed like days on that pier about being essentially a lackey to someone else’s whims, the result of that most often being that he got the blame for mistakes but his superior got the praise for things well done. “I’d say chances are that this one fits the bill. In fact, I can say for a fact that it does.”

“And you know that how? You said yourself, you have no personal connection to any of these people.”

“Well, for one, the position is a ranked one—Art Director. Does that say ‘lackey’ to you at all? Sounds to me like you’ll have enough of your own little minions around to treat like chattel.”

Draco doesn’t answer. Rather, he continues drinking the tea, but she can still see the rather wide smile behind the rim of his cup. Having finished hers already, she waits for him to down what remains of his cup, and then she offers her hand to him.

“Ready? Let’s show you London, shall we?”

* * *

“You’re sure this is all right?” Draco looks at the gates with some suspicion. As if responding to his very presence, the gates are slowly opening, and he continues to eye the iron with what she can only assume is caution. Thank god for motion sensors, she thinks, as they’re the only feasible Muggle explanation for something like this. “I don’t see any placards or information booths or anything.”

Hermione nods slowly. “Yes, of course.” The strength of her voice is surprising. She’s very glad that Draco’s too busy analysing the gates to the manor to look at her, as she’s still in the process of composing herself. This is the second time she’s ever set foot on these grounds, the first since the war. _Where’s your courage, girl?_ This house has never failed to make her feel inadequate as a Gryffindor. 

“And we just … walk in?”

“The gate’s open, isn’t it?” He still looks unconvinced, so she continues, “What say we just take a turn around the gardens, and if you don’t want to go around the actual house, we can go home.”

He looks at her then, and she quickly grows uncomfortable under his gaze. Did she really just say _home_? “Sorry. I mean, back to the city.” 

“Fine,” he says with a quick shrug and follows after her as she walks to go around the house. 

The gardens are as beautiful as anyone should expect of such an elite family. Hermione can’t control her gut reaction to the sight of them—an immediate gasp and wide eyes. 

Even Draco, as obviously reticent as he is, mumbles, “Wow.”

A winding pathway of large hedges, trees, and intricate patterns of flowers leads towards a quaint gazebo and an ancient willow tree. The view is magnificent, especially with the flowering trees in full bloom. 

“Apparently, spring has sprung.”

He chuckles in response. “Too right. You don’t see springs like this in San Francisco. At least, not that I’ve ever seen in the city.”

Hermione nods. “How strange it must be to have something like this in your own back garden.” She glances over her shoulder at the house, its presence rather foreboding. “I wonder if the owners remember to appreciate it.” It’s something she’s always wondered about stately homes and their curators—and even those who lived in the homes once upon a time. Did they always notice the beauty just beyond their noses, or did it take a drastic change—such as between seasons—to open their eyes?

“There’s only one way to find out,” Draco offers, his eyes still scanning the grounds. 

Hermione can’t help but laugh. “Oh, I’ll certainly never live on a property like this.”

“Why not?”

She fidgets under his sudden attention. “Beyond the fact that I could never afford a lifestyle like this, you mean? I’ve never been much for large spaces. Prefer it a bit cosier. Less to dust.”

“So you’d prefer a cramped flat in the city? After living in one for so long, more space is really attractive right about now.”

“I said cosy, not cramped. I think, ideally, I’d live in a cottage somewhere. Maybe in a forest.”

“A forest.” Draco’s brow is raised. “A bit random, isn’t it?”

She shrugs. “I’ve always loved forests, trees, that sort of thing. They calm me, I think. I’d probably get married in a forest if I could.”

He hums, which she can only take as agreement to some extent. “I feel the same, I think, about the coast. Something about the salty air.”

“Fresh air, at any rate.”

It’s always amazed Hermione how freeing a breath of fresh air can be. As much as she’s always been committed to her research, be that for schoolwork back at Hogwarts or in the stacks at the Ministry, she’s always loved sitting out on a patch of grass when the weather cooperates. There’s really nothing like a light breeze in springtime. It’s been a long time since she’s actually taken the time to just sit and enjoy anything. There’d certainly been no time for that during the war, no matter how breathtaking she’d found the sight of a freshly bloomed daffodil. And after the war? She’d been much too busy making sure nothing fell apart—both the government and what remained of her friends. And, in truth, herself. Perhaps she didn’t do it consciously, but working herself to the bone removed the possibility of thinking about what they’d lost—really thinking about it. 

Wandering around the garden towards the gazebo, Hermione gets that feeling—one she both loves and loathes—that usually accompanies her forays into nature. That of being a mere speck on the canvas of the universe. How untouched the forces of nature appear, despite how tumultuous her life has been. The stresses of her day-to-day, or even of all her years, are nothing. There’s something both healing and frightening in that thought.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Draco deadpans. Hermione’s eyes dart to him. He’s partway up the stairs to the gazebo, his feet planted on different steps, and his eyes are riveted on something. She follows his gaze to find a pair of white peacocks. The birds look as suspicious as Draco himself looks, and they put Hermione on edge. She’s been wary of touching much of anything, even the oak in the centre—for all she knows, there could still be any number of items that would curse a Muggle-born. She wouldn’t put it past the Malfoys. 

“Are you glaring at them?” 

Hermione looks back at Draco, who looks to be barely restraining himself from laughing at her. She mentally fumbles for a reason. “I … uh, hate birds. They freak me out.”

“Birds.”

She nods vehemently. “Especially peacocks. I’ve heard they’re the Dalmatians of bird folk.”

“Bird folk?” And this time he does laugh, this one more of a bark if anyone were to ask her. “Where do you come up with this shit?”

Hermione rolls her eyes and hurries to catch up with him, careful to stay a large distance from those damned birds. “I’ll have you know Dalmatians are known for being unpredictable. Not good with children, all that. Despite what Disney would have us believe—”

“So now you think Disney is conspiring against us. I hadn’t taken you for one of those types.”

She glares up at him, suddenly remembering and cursing the large height difference. “What types?”

“Those bloody conspiracy theorists. I suppose you think Disney’s trying to sexualise today’s youth and all that rot.”

“I’m not a conspiracy theorist! And you know, as far as subliminal messaging goes—”

“Jesus, you really can’t take a joke, can you?”

Hermione lifts her eyes from where she’d been staring at a spot on his shoe, but she can’t continue glaring whilst he’s grinning down at her like that. She’s felt the effects of his smile before, and she hates that it still does such things to her. Hermione can feel her face growing hot and her stomach jumpy. He just laughs again. 

“Come on,” he says. She nearly jumps when she feels his arm wrap around her shoulder. “Let’s have a look at this gazebo.”

Immediately, her mind goes into overdrive, trying to figure out why he’s suddenly _that_ comfortable with her. She hopes beyond hope that it’s just him being comfortable in a platonic way. Because if it’s him being comfortable and forward … that may bring what she’s doing to another level of betrayal in his eyes. The more pressing matter, however, is figuring out how she can brush him off whilst still maintaining whatever camaraderie exists between them. 

The answer comes to her in the form of a very feminine throat clearing behind them. Hermione spins quickly out from under Draco’s arm to look Narcissa Malfoy in the eye. 

He’s slower to turn, and she watches his face closely—just as she’s sure Narcissa is doing—for any semblance of recognition. Draco barely blinks; he just smiles and greets her, his manners apparently one of the remaining vestiges of his former life. “Good afternoon, ma’am.”

Narcissa is a great actress, Hermione thinks. Looking at the woman, you’d never have thought she was standing in front of her only child, who thought she was nothing more than a stranger with a large house. “Good afternoon. I came down to ask if you two would care for tea.”

Hermione glances at Draco, who simply shrugs at her. “I don’t see why not,” she says. 

Narcissa gives them a sweet smile. “Wonderful. Please follow me.” With that, she turns on her heel and walks back toward the manor. She is every inch the aristocrat, from the top of her perfect coif to her graceful stride. If Hermione didn’t know any better, she’d think the woman was actually gliding. “I do hope you’ve been enjoying the grounds,” Narcissa continues, playing the part of the perfect hostess. “You certainly picked the perfect season.”

“Yes, we have,” Draco answers softly. “Your gardens are phenomenal.”

Narcissa smiles over her shoulder at him. “Thank you very much, young man. We certainly pride ourselves on the grounds.”

The rest of the walk is quiet, and both Hermione and Draco are content to simply take in the splendour of the inside of the house. The décor is immaculate, as she’d always imagined it would be. Her previous experience with the place had been rather limited. It’s quite different from other Wizarding houses and establishments that she’s been to before. The Ministry, Hogwarts, and the Burrow all come to her mind as having very cluttered décor, as if the inhabitants felt it necessary to cover every inch of wall space with something, anything. Malfoy Manor, rather, looks much like any of the Muggle stately homes she’s been to. Anyone could see that the decoration of each space was agonised over, and in fact, it was probably agonised over centuries ago. 

“Please wait here. I’ll make sure the room is ready.” That is to say, let me clear out the house-elves, and please make sure my unknowing son doesn’t see them and have a panic attack. 

This is exactly what they’d planned. It had been up to Hermione to get him to the property and to tea with his parents. It had been up to the Malfoys to procure a potion that would return his memories. Hermione will make her getaway as soon as possible after he consumes the potion—through the tea, she’d guess. That had been one of Narcissa’s absolutes in the agreement. She didn’t want the girl messing up any chances they had of piecing their family back together. Hermione had had no qualms about that requirement—she is more than happy to get away before his temper unleashes. Let the Malfoys deal with the problem they’ve created. 

When Narcissa closes the door to the room, Hermione turns to Draco, who’s looking rather peaky. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” he says quickly. Too quickly. “This place has just been giving me the weirdest feeling. Almost like déjà vu, like I’ve been here.”

She looks at him carefully, even going so far as to put a hand on his shoulder to grab his attention. “Do you think—”

“No,” he cuts her off with a laugh, one filled more with bitterness than joy. “There’s no way. What kid doesn’t dream of growing up in a place like this?”

They both look up, startled, when Narcissa throws the door open with a loud creak. Her smile is pasted back on her face, and Hermione almost envies how good an actress the woman is. Though she supposes it’s part and parcel of her upbringing as one destined to be married off to someone rich and powerful. Or at least, that’s what these elite families hope, Hermione would think. “Please, do come in.”

Hermione follows Narcissa into the room, with Draco behind her. It takes all of ten seconds for Hermione to realise which room Narcissa’s decided to take their tea in, and her body halts of its own volition. 

“Are you all right?” Draco whispers, his hand at her back, gently urging her forward. She takes a deep breath, swallows, and surges forward. 

“How do you take your tea?” Narcissa asks as they take a seat on one of the settees. Hermione waits for Draco to answer, meanwhile trying to will her heartbeat to something more resembling normality.

“Cream, two sugars, please.”

She watches, almost in a daze, as Narcissa sets about preparing his tea. Hermione imagines it’s been a long time since the woman has done anything so common for herself. She’ll chastise herself for the rudeness—mental though it may be—later, but it’s taking most of Hermione’s concentration to not look at that spot on the floor near the fireplace. Just the thought gives her goose pimples. The details of her last experience in Malfoy Manor are burned into memory, never fading—no matter how much she might wish or pray. 

“And you, my dear?” Narcissa asks her, handing Draco his tea.

“Just the same, please,” she says softly, not trusting her voice to carry any louder. She quietly thanks their host when Narcissa offers her another cup and rests the saucer on her arm, hoping the warmth will ease the risen flesh. 

Draco, polite as ever, waits for Narcissa to prepare herself a final cup and sit before he takes a sip of the tea. 

“So, tell me,” Hermione hears Narcissa say, “what brings you to Wiltshire?”

After a slightly awkward pause, during which Hermione’s sure he’d expected her to speak, Draco answers, “Just a bit of sight-seeing. I’m visiting and haven’t seen a house such as this. It’s quite magnificent.”

“Thank you,” Narcissa says demurely, taking a small sip of the tea. Hermione does the same; she’d never admit it to Narcissa, but it’s quite possibly the best cuppa she’s had in years. 

“What’s next on your timetable, then?”

“A nap, I’m hoping. I’m a bit jetlagged, I think,” Draco says, trying his best to stifle a yawn and failing. 

Hermione looks up at him from her cup. He’s nearly finished his tea, and she can already see the signs of a sleeping potion. He can barely keep his eyes open. His last sip looks like it takes all of his remaining energy, and almost immediately he’s asleep. 

Narcissa hurries over and grabs the saucer and cup from his hand, placing it on the side table. Hermione quickly gets up and gathers her things while Narcissa mutters things to her sleeping son. As much as she dislikes Narcissa and Lucius, Hermione believes they deserves the alone time with their son after so long. 

“Where are you going, Miss Granger?”

Hermione already has her hand pressed against the door, fully prepared to leave and never return. “My work here is done.”

Narcissa clucks. “I’m afraid not. I need you to hold him down while I cast. This spell has the possibility of causing tremors, and I don’t want him to get a concussion from falling onto the floor.”

Hermione glares at the woman. Didn’t Narcissa know what she’d experienced in this room? That she wants out of here as soon as possible. 

“If nobody holds him down, I can’t guarantee that the spell will connect with him during the casting.”

Hermione sighs. Of course, there had to be some danger involved. “Fine.” She drops her bag unceremoniously in the middle of the floor, her care for niceties and manners long since gone. She makes her way over to the settee and positions herself behind Draco so that she can wrap her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his. Hopefully he isn’t too much stronger than she is, and Narcissa will have clear access to his torso for however long the spell requires. 

She closes her eyes and rests her forehead against his back as Narcissa casts. Through her eyelids, she sees flashes of purple, and almost immediately his body begins thrashing. At times her body wants nothing more than to just let his go. She hasn’t had to use many of her muscles aside from carrying one or two books since the war, and her arms and legs burn from the exertion. After what feels like a half hour, but must surely have been less than a minute, he stills. Hermione lifts her head to look at Narcissa, who nods. Hermione can only assume that means the spell is over, and so she quickly unravels herself from around Draco, repositioning his body so that he’s lying across the settee. 

“Now you may leave,” Narcissa says, her voice low. 

Hermione doesn’t know why the matriarch even keeps up that pretence of politeness. Don’t worry, she wants to say, you’ll never catch me near your property again. She marches over to her bag. When she bends to grab it from the floor, she hears a very low moan. She glances over her shoulder when she stands again, meeting the very angry eyes of Draco Malfoy. 

Hermione keeps her face as impassive and free of emotions as she can, and turns towards the door again. With a deep breath, she leaves the room and walks as swiftly as she can towards the gates, from which she Apparates home.


	3. PART THREE

“Why didn’t you tell me you were back?”

Hermione looks up from her seemingly endless mounds of paperwork at her now-open door to see Ginny. Her friend looks less than pleased. “Sorry, Gin.” She sighs. Honestly, she’d been in a steady cycle of working and trying to sleep since … well, since she’d finished that job. 

“So,” Ginny begins, and Hermione mentally braces herself. “How are you?” The question is pointed, and many parts of Hermione wish she could avoid any and all questions related to Draco Malfoy. 

“I’m fine.” Hermione leans back in her chair, resting her hands in her lap in an attempt to dissuade any of her nervous habits from showing. When Ginny just looks at her—as if Hermione had actually called her an idiot—she continues, “Really. Just tired and trying to catch up.”

“Tell me you haven’t been in the office all weekend.” 

“I haven’t.”

Ginny looks unconvinced. “Now tell me you haven’t been working all weekend.” When Hermione simply looks down at her desk, Ginny sighs. “You can’t work yourself like this. Aren’t you exhausted?”

Hermione shrugs. “It’s got to be done, Ginny.” She doesn’t know how many times she’s told Ginny that, as a consultant, she can’t just give tasks to anyone else. It’s her job, all of it. 

“I suppose you haven’t even realised it’s lunchtime, have you?” This time, a smile graces Ginny’s face. She lifts up a small paper sack from the contents of her bag.

Hermione smiles as she recognises the logo. “My favourite. Sly move.” 

“You look like you haven’t eaten in a week,” Ginny says as she sets the bag on Hermione’s desk. “My guess is that I don’t have to make you promise to eat it.”

“Yes, Mum,” Hermione teases. The aroma wafting from the bag is enough to make her drool. She’s always been incapable of resisting a good Pad See Ew. 

“You’re working through lunch, aren’t you?” Ginny says with a short laugh.

Hermione resists rolling her eyes. It’s been a long while since she’s been self-conscious about her work habits. Instead, she nods. “But I think I’m going to go home a bit early. Do you want to come over for dinner?”

“Oh!” Ginny sounds surprised. Hermione supposes it _has_ been a long time since she’s left work a second before five. “Yeah, of course. I’ll just let Harry know he’s on his own tonight.”

“I’m sure he’d be happy to have a boys’ night or something.” Hermione laughs. “Tell him I’ll owl him for lunch this week sometime, will you?”

Ginny nods. “Shall do! What time tonight, then?”

Hermione pauses, trying to remember if there are any groceries left in her kitchen. “I still need to pick up some things from Tesco, so how’s seven?”

Ginny lifts the strap of her bag higher on shoulder and smiles. “See you then!”

* * *

She walks in the door to her flat at just after five-thirty. As she probably should have expected, she hadn’t left the office at four as planned. But four-thirty is better than nothing, right?

With a loud grunt from the exertion, she drops three bags full of groceries onto her counter. Going to the market hungry is never a good idea—it always radically lowers her impulse control—but this is where last-minute planning gets you. Hermione quickly puts away the items she won’t need for dinner, puts the kettle on, and pads to her bedroom to change into something more comfortable. It had felt weird that morning to put on business clothes, after so long wearing denims. She’s looking forward to a quiet evening of lounging about in her favourite flannel shirt, complete with a bit of curry and tea. The only hiccup is sure to be whatever third degree Ginny will inflict on her. 

At six-thirty, she’s sitting on her sofa with Dorian asleep in her lap, George R. R. Martin’s latest novel in one hand and her third cuppa in the other. Three sharp raps on her door startle her; little Dorian issues his complaint by repositioning himself on the other end of the sofa. 

She frowns—Ginny’s early. They’d agreed on seven, Hermione had thought. Ah well, it’s not as if the girl’s never been early. 

“Coming!” she hollers, moving the bookmark—this one the receipt she’d received upon purchasing the tome—to mark her page and setting both the book and her cup on the coffee table. En route to the door, she passes by the cooker to check on the curry chicken she’s making.

As she pulls the door open, she announces, “It’ll be ready in ten minutes, I—” Her mouth falls open when she realises that the person gracing her doorstop is, in fact, not Ginny Weasley. 

Not even close. 

“We need to talk,” Draco says—or perhaps ‘growls’ is a better term. “Do you mind?” He gestures towards the inside of her flat, and her body automatically flattens itself against the door to allow him in.

Eyes wide, Hermione turns her body towards the door as she shuts it—her back towards Draco—and takes the few seconds to calm her nerves. Her heart is beating a mile a minute, and it’s not the good kind. It’s much more of a fear-induced beating, much to her chagrin, but she’s just let the equivalent of a ticking time-bomb into her flat. 

She slowly turns around, pressing her back against the door and crossing her arms across her chest. Draco is standing in her living room, gaze fixed on the various photographs that decorate her mantel. His hands are stuffed in his pockets, and she can see the outlines of his clenched fists. 

“What can I help you with, Draco?” Hermione wraps her flannel tighter around her body, cradling her elbows. Nobody is quite as able to make her feel vulnerable as Draco. 

He lets out a bitter chuckle whilst he turns to face her, ending with a single raised eyebrow and incredulous smile. “Well.” He hums. “I suppose an explanation would be a good place to start.”

She scoffs. “What makes you think I owe you anything?” 

She’d always found it interesting to watch his moods swing. The speed with which he can go from interested to bored out of his skull, or—as presently—teasing to angry, is fascinating. And also scary. The small smile, incredulous though it was, seems to literally drop off his face and what’s left is nothing but a blank expression, perhaps a little tight around the mouth. 

“Let’s see. You literally kidn—”

“Let me stop you there, your majesty." Hermione takes two steps towards him, her hand raised to interrupt him. “It was a _job_ , not a personal vendetta against you.”

“The larger question, of course”—Hermione can just hear the bitterness in his voice as he continues, each word slow and careful—“is how dare you?”

She offers him a bitter smile of her own. “Your mother is my client, and I delivered what was promised. End of story.”

“I see you’ve completely abandoned ethics in your old age.”

“I’m not the one who’s already got wrinkles. Must’ve been that sea air. Didn’t you know it’s not good for skin, Draco? Any longer in California, and you’d look like an old fisherman.” She smiles when his frown deepens. “Not that you’d know anything about ethics anyway.”

“Well, I’ve never lured someone across the world under the guise of a better life, only to—”

“To what? Return your memories?”

“Yes, just that.”

“Officially, that wasn’t me. It was your mother, and you can take that particular bone up with her.”

“That’s a non-issue. I don’t understand how—” 

He halts mid-sentence, his gaze riveted on the kitten currently stretching on the couch, clearly unable to continue his nap with all this ruckus. She can see Draco working his jaw, and she closes her eyes once she realises—

“Dorian?” His words are soft as he recalls the name of her cat from his brief time in her flat as a Muggle, but Merlin, are they loaded. With a twinge of amusement, as if he’s just guessed the answer to a particularly difficult riddle. Not much, but it’s enough to make her immediately try to erect what remained of her walls. “That’s rather a loaded name, isn’t it?” he says, looking at her for the first time in five minutes. 

Her eyes narrow. Of course he would see through that name, one shared by the lead character in her favourite book. And his favourite. It was one of the first things that she and Draco had found they had in common. She’d felt it only fitting when she first got the kitten, who’s grey from head to toe.

“And Crooks?”

Hermione’s eyes narrow even more. “What do you think? I didn’t trade him in for a younger version, if that’s what you asking.”

His eyes move to the book and cup on the table near the couch. “What has happened to your manners, Granger? You’ve not even offered me tea.”

“I don’t generally offer hospitality to men who barge their way into my flat.”

He shrugs. “Your tea was inadequate anyway.”

She rolls her eyes. “Who knew, even after all these years, you’d still be such a bastard?”

“We both know my parentage is no longer in question, Granger.”

After a long pause, during which she’d refused to dignify that with an answer, he continues. “So,” he says, his arms rising to cross his chest. 

“So, what?”

“I’m still waiting for that explanation.”

She sneers. “You are in no position to demand an explanation from me. I told you: I owe you _nothing_.”

“Oh, and I suppose you think I owe _you_ something?”

Hermione raises her eyebrows and tilts her head, incredulous. 

“You,” he continues, “are the one who displaced me, forced my memories back on me, and then left.”

“I _told_ you I didn’t have anything to do with the mem—”

“What makes you think I even wanted them back?” he yells. 

Hermione rolls back her shoulders, straightening her posture to regain some of her height. “Do you even realise how miserable you were?”

“What makes you think my memories don’t make me that much more miserable? Oh, I apologise. It slipped my mind that you know everything.”

She ignores the insult. “Was your life so much more terrible than every other person who survived?” Her mind goes immediately to the likes of Fred’s family and friends, to Lavender and her new life, to little Dennis Creevey. “The war affected all of us.”

“Not everyone killed their best friend, now, did they?”

Hermione’s jaw slackens as she remembers. 

Just before the last battle, he’d been tasked with one thing and failed—something he’d fixated on for weeks after. Arthur had mentioned once that his fixation had made him all the more ruthless—and so, useful—in the final battle at Hogwarts. Pansy Parkinson had been sent to deliver a small cache of medicine to one of the safe houses from St. Mungo’s, and Draco had accompanied her. They never sent anyone alone. Draco came back alone, and changed. Arthur and Remus had been tight-lipped about what had happened, but Hermione had pieced it together—with the few things they and Draco did say, and what he muttered in his sleep on nights he hadn’t taken a Dreamless Sleep potion. The details of the event reside only in his memory; what was important to her was Draco’s immense guilt. She could see, especially when it was just the two of them, just how the weight of Pansy’s death affected him, as if an ounce more would make his very bones disintegrate. 

Her fingers twitch as she resists her desire to palm his neck, to caress his cheek, but barely. “You know it wasn’t your fault. I don’t know how many times I tried to show you—”

He scoffs. “Right. Accidents happen. The dangers of friendly fire. If I had a Galleon for every time someone’s said that—”

“Draco,” Hermione starts, but he recoils. It’s then that she realises that she’d reached out as if to touch him, and she immediately pulls her arm back to hug herself. 

“If I couldn’t keep her safe, how could I protect anyone else? Who’s to say an accident wouldn’t happen again?”

She shakes her head. “Accidents happen. Life is unpredictable, and you can’t live like that. In fear of the hypotheticals.” There was a time when he’d railed at her for every ‘what if’ that passed her lips. 

“I did what was necessary.”

Hermione stares at him, more than a little confused by what’s hidden in his words. She can only assume he means her when he says ‘anyone else’, but that’s an assumption she is too hesitant to make.

“What, to protect people? Yes, I can see how removing your memory and moving across the world was the best way to keep the ones you love safe.” She looks down at her fingers, digging out the day’s dirt from under her nails. “Do you ever think of anyone but yourself?”

“I was thinking of y—”

“No, fuck you. Don’t you dare try to say you were thinking of me when you _left_.” Hermione forces herself to exhale, trying to calm her boiling blood. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she can see why he’d run. But her own pain from his abandonment bubbles to the surface of her being, and she can’t see past it. She continues, her voice uneven, “Besides. We weren’t anything, remember?”

He crosses the few paces left between us and clutches her shoulders tightly, enough to make her wince. “Don’t. Don’t pretend I didn’t mean anything to you.”

“I never said that,” she says, attempting in vain to free herself from his iron grip. It’s too much to hope that he’d not made the connection—that when she’d spoken in San Francisco about the one who left, it’d been him. “But don’t pretend I meant anything to you. Not in the end.”

His mouth drops open, and Hermione can honestly say this is the first time she’s seen him speechless. 

“I couldn’t—” He pauses, swallowing hard. “—couldn’t deal with it, Hermione. Any of it.”

She frowns, looking down at her shoulder, where his grip is more firm than vice-like now. “Draco—”

A loud knock interrupts her, and she turns to face the door. Draco’s hands immediately loosen and slip from her arms, as he steps further back. She can see him retreating in every sense of the word. 

Hermione sighs when she looks through the peephole to see Ginny’s face, but she can’t tell if that’s a sigh of relief or disappointment. She swings the door open with a small smile, one that causes Ginny to halt her cheerful greeting.

“What’s wrong?” she asks suspiciously.

In answer, Hermione simply swings the door all the way open, and Ginny’s eyes widen at the sight of the blond standing in her living room. 

“Ah,” Ginny breathes out. She looks back and forth between Hermione and Draco, who each grow more and more awkward. “Should I come back later?”

“No,” both Hermione and Draco say at the same time, their voices creating a cacophonous sound that Hermione thinks is what their relationship would sound like. 

Draco looks at Hermione, startled, before continuing, alone this time, “I was just leaving.”

Ginny raises her eyebrows, clearly seeing through his fib, and then shrugs, making her way into Hermione’s flat. Dropping her bag on the dining table, Ginny offers a curt nod of both greeting and adieu to Draco as he sweeps out of the apartment. 

Hermione turns away from the door before she can see him leave and pads to the small bathroom connected to her bedroom. Soon, the faucet is running ice-cold water, and she’s throwing palms full of it to her face. She coughs and hacks, trying to rid the lump from her throat so she can just _breathe_. 

She feels so exhausted. Mentally, emotionally. Even physically, which is probably the most surprising of all. But Hermione’s never been the best at managing her feelings, always one to rationalise and rid herself of feelings through logic. 

Over the sound of the running tap, she hears her kitchen timer go off, and she spins on her heel. Mild panic sets in, although she knows there’s more to this than the thought of an overcooked curry. To her surprise, when she opens the door, Ginny is leaned against the doorframe to her bedroom, arms crossed. In her hands is a pencil drawing, the folds well worn. Hermione thinks it must have been lying on her floor.

“I need to go check—”

Ginny interrupts her with a wave of her wrist. “The curry’s fine. I’ve Charmed it to stay warm.” She looks down at the drawing, her features softening at the sight of their old friends. “So what was that all about?” She sounds deceivingly calm.

“He’s upset,” Hermione says, pulling the bathroom door shut. “I’d expected as much.”

“Do you think he doesn’t have the right to be?” 

Hermione looks up at her friend, unsure what she’s implying. “I suppose.” 

“Are you saying you wouldn’t feel betrayed?”

“I’m saying he’s not the only one to feel betrayed.” Hermione sighs. “Can we talk about something else?”

Ginny shrugs, and then lifts us the drawing. “How come I’ve never seen this? It’s beautiful.”

Hermione smiles, nostalgia setting in. “He drew that for me.”

“Who, Draco?” Ginny asks, surprised. “I had no idea he could draw. This is magnificent.”

She nods. “He went into art as a Muggle. He was always doodling at Hogwarts, so it’s no wonder.”

Hermione looks up in surprise when she feels a hand around hers, and Ginny pulls her in for a tight hug, the drawing falling forgotten to the floor.

“Are you all right, Hermione?”

She nods slowly, and once she finds her voice, says, “I will be.”

Ginny grips her face between her two hands, as if checking for any possibility of a breakdown. With an almost sad smile, she lets go of Hermione’s face. “Let’s have that curry, then. And wine. You definitely need some wine.”

Hermione humours her with a soft chuckle. The wine will put her straight to sleep, as Ginny well knows. But perhaps that’s what she needs: a night of uninterrupted sleep, of escape from the clusterfuck that her life has become of late.

* * *

“So the rumours are true,” Harry notes bemusedly. Hermione follows his gaze to find Draco seated on a bench near her building, his nose buried in a copy of _The Guardian_. Harry scrunches his nose. “Is that a Muggle newspaper? I never thought I’d see the day.”

Hermione nods. “Strange,” she mutters, trailing off. She makes a mental note to thank Ginny profusely for not talking to the boys about why Hermione hadn’t been around recently. She’s not ashamed, but Harry’s need to protect her at every turn has the tendency to complicate everything. 

It’s impressive how quickly rumours about his return have spread, but then again it’s not beyond the realm of possibility for the head of the Auror Office to know these things. She’s more concerned with how close he is to her workplace. Call it paranoia, but another argument with him is the last thing she wants. She doesn’t have the energy for it.

She sends silent praises to the gods when Harry doesn’t even notice that she’s led them the long way to her office in an attempt to avoid that bench. 

“I’m glad we finally got the chance to grab lunch,” she says when they reach her office. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

Harry nods bashfully. Hermione has to resist cupping his cheek. It amazes her how boyish he remains, even now. “I never knew it’d be so difficult to balance everything. Work, family, a social life.” 

“I guess that’s what growing up’s all about, isn’t it?” she quips, dropping her bag on her desk and moving toward her fireplace. 

Harry chuckles. “And what a joy it’s been.” He pulls her in for a hug, and she presses her face into his shoulder, inhaling the comforting scent that can only be described as _Harry_. Sometimes, she wishes she could bottle it up—there are few things that make her feel as safe as he does. 

“I’ll see you next week, yeah?” he asks as he opens the grate, a handful of Floo powder already in his hand. When she nods, leaning against the end of her desk that faces the fireplace, he offers a quick wave and a bright smile and then disappears in a flash of green flames. 

Even after ten minutes have passed, she’s still perched on the end of her desk, eyes riveted on the still-open grate. She hates unexpected things, hates surprises. And so, seeing Draco at the end of her lunch had put her on edge, something that she’s sure won’t be remedied until she has the chance to take a long, hot bath. And frankly, that’s not likely to happen even tonight. 

She sighs, stretching to try and relieve some of the aches running up her spine. Her anxiety about having a run-in with Draco earlier is already taking its toll on her body. Hermione Granger has never been one to deal well with emotional stress. Give her a hectic exam period over this any day. Her sigh turns to one of relief when she hears the tell-tale sound of her spine cracking. 

Hermione glances with some hesitance down at her bag. With a grunt, she slides onto her feet, turning to face the large bag. She reaches inside, pulling her hand out with a small leather notebook. She smiles at the sight and runs her fingers down the spine. This notebook has been a good friend to her for the majority of her post-war life. She’s never been good at confrontation, usually too flustered to say what she actually _means_ except on rare occasion when the words that escape her lips strike true. 

This little notebook is full of letters, to many of the people who have come and gone in her life. Some are letters to the deceased. She feels guilty, but there’s more than one letter raging at Remus and Tonks for leaving them, for leaving Teddy to repeat those parts of Harry’s life. Some are her juvenile attempts at avoiding fights with her friends. And others are her way of working through her feelings. 

There are some that she still can’t look at, hasn’t since she first wrote them days and weeks and years ago. 

Today is the first day she actually sends one of her notebook letters. She gently tears out the last page she’s written on, the words barely three days old. This one she’d written the night of her argument with Draco, after Ginny finally went home. In it, she offers and cries for explanations. These words that she’s ripped from some of the deeper caverns of her heart, where that pain has been festering for years.

Hermione’s fairly sure there are tearstains on the pages, but there’s no point in clearing them now. After sending this, she will have nothing to hide from him. The freedom is tantalising. 

She takes a deep breath, her eyes caught on the end of the letter.

> _I needed the closure. And I think it’s safe to say that any remaining questions I had about where we stand are more than answered._
> 
> _Welcome back to Wizarding society._

This isn’t exactly the closure she’s needed, but she’s long since accepted that she may never get it fully. The closure she does get from this note will have to suffice, she decides, folding the pieces of parchment and sliding them into a small envelope. Her hand shakes as his name follows the point of her pen, but she’s too tired in too many ways to care if her script is more messy than normal. Like he’d remember her handwriting anyway. They’d never been the note-passing type—perhaps they would have been, had they not been in the midst of a war.

Hermione clears her throat and rises, the envelope in her hand as she marches through her door and to her secretary’s desk. The young girl smiles up at her.

“Afternoon, Madeleine,” she says with a small smile. The stretch on her face is uncomfortable—she’s never been a fan of insincere smiles. “Can you please send this out as soon as possible?” She places the envelope face-down on the girl’s desk.

“Of course. I was just about to head to the owlery.”

“Also, I will be taking holiday time next week.”

“Oh!” Madeleine looks almost perturbed in her surprise but recovers with a wide smile. “That’s great! I’ll be sure to clear that time with your contracts.” 

Hermione nods. All of her contracts are required, by law, to include a certain amount of holiday time, so she’s not concerned about the time not being cleared.

“I’m glad you’re finally taking some time off, Miss Granger.” Madeleine rises, Hermione’s letter to Draco in her hand. “I’ll be back just as soon as I owl these.”

Hermione nods, turning back to her office once Madeleine is out of sight. She nearly jumps when she realises that Narcissa Malfoy is standing next to her office door. There’s no telling how long the woman had been standing there, and Hermione hopes against hope that she hadn’t taken notice of the addressee of that letter. It isn’t so much shame as it is a strong need for privacy. 

“Mrs Malfoy,” Hermione greets. “How can I help you?”

“I thought we might discuss that particular matter in the privacy of your office, Miss Granger.”

Hermione nods and follows the matriarch into her office, shutting the door behind her with her foot. She waits until Narcissa has made herself comfortable—or at least as comfortable as she will get—in one of the chairs before taking her own seat behind her desk. 

“I’m sorry I cannot offer refreshments, ma’am. We don’t usually meet with clients in my office, as you know.” Every other time the two women had met, it’d been at a slightly upscale restaurant. 

Narcissa offers nothing but a curt nod. “Right down to it, then.” She reaches into her small purse and removes a change purse. 

Hermione frowns at the sight of it. Almost immediately, her hands come up to pause the older woman. “Mrs Malfoy, please. I can’t accept your money.”

Narcissa looks at her shrewdly, incredulous. “This is the agreed-upon sum, Miss Granger. You were tasked with delivering my son back to me, and as far as I can tell, you’ve done so without irrevocable damage to his person.”

Hermione sighs, leaning forward onto her elbows. “Please, keep your money.”

Narcissa leans back in her chair, letting the change-purse rest on her lap. Her head tilts to one side just slightly, as if that will help her better understand the woman sitting before her. “Why did you take the job, Miss Granger?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Considering they concern my son, I would appreciate you casting some light on the subject.” Narcissa laces her fingers together, settling her linked hands over the bags in her lap. “Even the kindest people do not just do such a thing and refuse the money.”

Hermione sighs, trying desperately not to roll her eyes. “Consider it my charitable work for the year, then.” She can see Narcissa’s mouth transform into a barely concealed sneer. “Please, keep your money. I’m sure there are much better places you could be investing it.” Her mind quickly goes to the various charities created to help war orphans and widows, not to mention one for Hogwarts.

Narcissa gives her another curt nod and stands gracefully, placing the change-purse back into the confines of her smaller bag. Hermione wishes she could better tell what the woman is thinking. This must be where Draco inherited his uncanny ability to hide every emotion. She’s always been rather jealous of that. 

“We are hosting an event this Saturday to celebrate his return,” Narcissa says as she slips a thick piece of parchment—an invitation, as it turns out—onto Hermione’s desk. 

Hermione glances at it for all of three seconds, but she doesn’t reach for it. “I will, unfortunately, not be in town this weekend.”

“Yes—I admit, I overheard you talking about your impending holiday. Surely you could postpone it a few days.” 

Hermione isn’t fooled. She knows she’s the last thing Narcissa would want at any of her social gatherings. 

“I’m afraid I can’t. Though I’ll be sure to tell my friends to pay my respects for me, if they attend.” Hermione would bet her left arm that Narcissa was more concerned with a certain bespeckled war hero attending. 

Soon, Narcissa leaves, although Hermione can see troves of questions in her eyes. Questions that even Hermione doesn’t know the answers to, that is _if_ she wants them.

* * *

Draco Malfoy is the last person she’d expected to see at her favourite coffee shop in Camden Town. But there he is. The cowl of his jumper is pulled high over his head, but it’s not difficult to identify that hair. Or those angles. He’s always been a summation of hard lines.

He doesn’t notice her for a long time, but it allows her to observe him. She’d always thought it interesting to see how people act and look when they think nobody’s watching. He looks deep in thought, his lips resting against a steaming cup of what she can only assume is tea. Black, probably, with orange peel and honey. It’s times like these that she curses her memory. It keeps in stock things, like his favourite way to take tea, in lieu of more important things—like anything, really.

She hadn’t meant to stare, but soon his ears redden and his gaze snaps to her. The thoughtful, perhaps sad, look on his face disappears as his expression hardens.

“What are you doing here?” 

She can hear the derision in his voice, and it nearly makes her flinch. A fight with Draco is the last thing she needs. She just wants to get through her morning and then her afternoon without incident and then sleep. With how sleepless her nights have been recently, Hermione’ll probably have to dig into her potions cache. The only good news, she thinks, is her impending holiday. A week of escape starting tomorrow, and all she can think about is the sleep she’ll hopefully get.

Motioning towards the counter with her coffee tumbler, she says defensively, “I come here every day on my way to work.” 

He nods slowly, his eyes focused several inches to her left, and he takes a long sip of his drink. 

“This is a bit far from, erm…” She pauses and glances around the room whilst trying to think of the least conspicuous word she could think of to signify _Wizarding London_ , “… The Leaky and all that, isn’t it?”

Draco leans back in his chair with a sigh. “I’m trying to avoid my re-entrance to society for as long as possible.”

“Oh,” Hermione says a little too enthusiastically. More quietly, she continues, “So you’re staying.”

He nods.

She bites her lip, unsure of what to say. So many things have been said already. She loathes the feeling of awkwardness that always seeps into her bones in his presence. “Well,” she says, clearing her throat with a glance at the clock. “I’ll be late if I don’t head out now. It was good seeing you.” She hadn’t known it possible, but those last words leave her feeling even more awkward as she walks to the counter and orders her tea. 

She has to force herself not to look over her shoulder and smile when she hears his low “You, too.”

* * *

Three days later, Hermione is 5,000 miles and eight time zones away. She now stands, leaning against the railing of a San Francisco pier, the night sea air caressing her face and further tangling her hair. Never having spent much time near water—her parents had always been much more interested in skiing and Paris than a beach for holidays—the calm that the water brings her is surprising. Cathartic even.

Her leather notebook is balanced on the top railing, waiting. 

She’d arrived several hours ago, dropping her things off at the hotel and pausing to quickly Floo Ginny, who surprisingly hadn’t barraged Hermione with question after question. Instead, she’d calmly asked when Hermione would be back and then—just as Hermione was preparing to disconnect the call—Ginny mentioned, “He’s been looking for you, you know—at least, that’s what Harry says.”

Not surprising, Hermione had thought. He probably just wants to continue their argument. Anything to have the last word. 

Hermione had returned to San Francisco for the water—it offers a calm unlike anything she’s ever known. She wanted to be as far away from England as possible, if only for a few days. Besides, the likelihood that he would return to this city in the midst of his family’s celebrations is miniscule at best. She tries not to think about how strong her memories of this place are stained by Draco, but there’s something about this pier that’s calming despite it all. No other place feels right. 

She rubs her eyes as if to clear her mind of all thoughts of Draco. He isn’t the reason she’s here—well, not entirely, at least—and she needs to start now or she never will. Already, she’s walked around this part of the city three times today, before determining that yes, she wants to do this today. And yes, she needs to do this. 

Balancing the notebook on the lowest rung on the railing, Hermione sighs and opens it. Her throat constricts at the sight of the quick note written on the first page. 

_G –  
I was not put on this earth to listen to you whinge about everything in your life just because you couldn’t confront a Pygmy Puff. _

The old dedication has never failed to bring a smile to her face—however small. There are so many memories wrapped into the one sentence. Through the war, as they’d spent more and more time together, he’d been privy to a growing number of Hermione’s rants about various things. Sometimes it was something as small as a leaking faucet or Seamus nearly starting a fire in the garden. She’d smiled and thanked him when he gave her the notebook, but her rants with him—at least that’s what he called them—didn’t stop. Rather, she’d grown to talk with him about heavier things—death, the war, the unfairness of it all—and if his own ramblings were any clue, he wasn’t too hurt that she’d tucked the notebook away. As far as she’d been concerned, she didn’t need it. Outside of the four walls of her room at Grimmauld Place, she’d had to be the brave girl everyone had come to know. That Hermione couldn’t break down or fail or stop and just scream, no matter how much she’d wanted to. Those things could only happen in the safety of her room, where Draco would talk her down from her whispered rage and panic, and she would later rock him through his nightmares. 

That notebook stayed in her trunk, unnecessary and unused.

Until the Battle, that is—when everything changed. When they both had to tend to their respective families in the aftermath of the war, and hours together at night discussing the various wrongs and rights they’d experienced became a thing of the past. And when Draco disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving only a short note behind him— _I’m alive. Don’t come looking._ —she didn’t have much of a choice. 

That notebook became her sanity and lifeline. And what she hadn’t realised until her recent ordeal in returning Draco was how much she needs closure, not just where he’s concerned but with every detail written on the pages of that notebook. 

As she flips to the middle of the book, Hermione clenches her fist in an attempt to push through her hesitation. She’s determined to follow through with her plan: finally let go of the war. Pressing her lips together to curb any further reluctance, she breathes out her nose and promptly rips out the page she’s on.

* * *

Hermione’s grip tightens around the letter in her hand. She would swear she’d just heard the pier creak under the weight of someone’s walk, but it’s still the middle of the night (three in the morning, the last time she’d checked) and she sees no good reason for anyone else to be there. Perhaps it’s a homeless person, hoping to scavenge some loose change off her. If only they knew exactly how far the coins in her pocket would get them.

She turns, preparing to shoo whomever it is away. She certainly isn’t above a well-placed glare. 

“Can I help y—” Hermione’s mouth falls open as her eyes take in her unexpected visitor, and the notebook falls from her hand to the pier with a loud thunk. With a heavy breath, she greets him. 

“Draco.” 

The huskiness of her voice surprises her, and she clears her throat and tries to wipe away any remnants of the many tears she’s shed over the past few hours. She’d known that making her way through that notebook would be no walk in the park, but she hadn’t been expecting Draco’s presence.

She watches him nod at her in greeting as if in slow motion and bend. Her heartbeat speeds with the beginnings of a panic attack when she watches him pick up the book. Before she quite realises what she’s doing, she steps forward and snatches it from his hand, pulling it into her chest almost protectively. 

“What are you doing here?” she demands, her voice more acceptable now that she’s had the chance to swallow as much of that damned lump as possible.

He pauses, and she takes the moment to take in his appearance. He’s dressed rather formally. In fact, he looks like a picture of his pre-San Francisco self, with the difference of a very slightly aged face. He’d always worn fine clothes like a second skin, a habit that apparently had not been lost. His hair is the only piece of him even remotely out of place, and even then it’s barely windswept. For all she knows, it could have been purposefully coiffed—she’d heard of some men doing that to look ‘carefree’ or some bollocks like that. It seems like something Draco would do. 

“Isn’t it a bit dangerous for you to be hanging out on a pier in the middle of the night?” he asks, completely ignoring her question.

She rolls her eyes, about to fire back when her brain connects his formal dress with her recent memory. “Wait,” she says, glancing at her watch before levelling him with a sharp glare. “Aren’t you missing your own party? That’s rather rude, isn’t it?”

His expression hardens almost immediately, and she can see his posture straighten. “Like it’s any of your business.”

She raises an eyebrow at his pathetic attempt to evade the question. “Ah, well, it’s not that surprising anyway.”

He narrows his eyes in suspicion, but he bites anyway. “What isn’t?”

“You running away. Has it become an automatic reaction now?”

Draco lifts his head, just enough that he has to look down his nose at here. “Much like the illusion that you’re actually better than everyone, you mean?” When she simply glares at him, he continues, “I see you still are incapable of actual confrontation, Granger.” With a smirk, he waves around what she can only assume is the letter she’d owled him days ago. 

Hermione barely contains a snarl. “Don’t pretend you know anything about me.”

“Who said anything about pretending? It’s been how many years? And you still can’t stomach face-to-face conflict. Some Gryffindor you are.”

“Come to remedy that yourself, have you?” she asks, wincing when she hears how much her voice betrays her fatigue. It’s late, and she’s exhausted—emotionally, mentally, physically. Fighting with him had not been in her plan for the night. 

“Look,” he says, scratching behind his neck. “I didn’t come to fight, Hermione.”

“So why are you here?” she asks softly. The question is so delicate in her mind that she’s afraid to speak it too loudly, lest it should break. 

She follows his gaze down to the letter in his hands, noting how worn the creases look and the unreadable expression on his face. “What, you want to _talk_?” She feels like laughing, but she can’t tell if it’s the fatigue or not.

Draco slowly crosses his arms and shrugs, and she can’t help but roll her eyes. Ever with the non-answers.

“I don’t want to talk about any of that,” she says firmly. “I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

“And what might that be?”

“It’s private.” She sniffs. 

He sneers. “Well, you certainly picked a _private_ place, didn’t you?”

Hermione sighs, fingering the spine of her notebook. “I’m trying to move on, Draco.”

At this, his expression softens—just slightly, but it’s enough. “Move on from what?”

A laugh escapes her before she even has the chance to realise it. It’s breathy and bitter and sums up the mess of emotions she’s feeling now. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone so she could just _do_ this and get on with her life? 

“Everything. You. The war,” she says, her voice breaking on the last syllable. 

She presses her lips together in an attempt to retain her composure. Maybe if she says as little as possible, moves as little as possible, the giant lump in her throat won’t explode into sobs. 

“And what if I don’t want you to?”

“Then leave!” she shouts, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. She sets her jaw and lifts her chin in defiance. She’ll be damned if she starts to cry in front of him. 

Hermione can’t contain her gasp when she feels Draco take her face between his hands, forcing her to look straight into his eyes. There’s that familiar feeling that she’s always had a hard time putting to words. It’s safety and warmth, everything soothing and yet terrifying at once. The panic in her stomach starts to melt away, as if it’s just falling out of her pores and away into the water to accompany her letters.

“I—” he starts, swallowing heavily. “I don’t want closure, because I don’t want this to end, whatever this is.”

She exhales a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding and raises her hands to lightly grip his wrists. She hadn’t been prepared for this, hadn’t imagined in a million years that her night at the pier would turn this way. As much as her entire being wants to just curl up in his embrace, there’s a mountain of doubt piled up in her stomach, and it’s something she can’t ignore.

She shakes her head and gently pulls his hands away from her, pushing them against his chest. “You left,” she says softly. “You don’t get to just run back in like this.”

His jaw clenches, and he steps to stand next to her at the railing, his front and her back facing the dark water. “I know,” he says. “It was a selfish decision.”

Surprised, Hermione whips her head to the side to look at him. She doesn’t think she’s ever heard him refer to himself as selfish. Never mind the fact that this sounds like the beginning of an _explanation_ , something she’d have had to pull teeth to get out of him in the past. 

“I couldn’t deal with it anymore. Pansy was eating away at me. I don’t care what anyone says; she should not have died, not like that. Not at the hands of her best friend, no matter how accidental it was.” He sighs, running his palm over his hair. “It consumed me, thinking about it—knowing that I’d failed her, and knowing that I’d fail again, with my track record. So I found a way to escape everything.”

She looks down at her hands, shaking her head lightly. “And that certainly turned out well for you.”

“It did and it didn’t.” Curious, Hermione turns her head just slightly towards him. “Not having Pansy occupy my every thought? That was brilliant. But there was a huge hole in my life all those years. I always felt out of place, that something was missing. And it was you.”

Hermione turns to face him, leaning her elbow on the railing. 

“You’re home, Hermione. My life doesn’t make sense without you.”

It’s those last words that destroy her resolve to not break down. And it isn’t so much how heartfelt they are coming from him—because she knows he’d never lie to say he needs someone—but the knowledge that his words fit her just as well. And this is why she’s never been able to get over him, to move on and accept that he’d left.

“I need you, too,” she chokes out.

Blinded by her tears, she somehow manages to push herself into his embrace. She can’t tell who’s holding the other more tightly, but she finds it easier to breathe somehow around the discomfort. Hermione breathes in heavily, her nose pressed into the skin of Draco’s neck. His scent and the pull of his arms around her, so familiar, are home. And when he bends to kiss her, the notebook falls out of her grasp and onto the pier with a loud thud. 

This is exactly the closure she wanted, but never thought to ask for.


End file.
